


stay awake with me, take your hand and come and find me

by Jay815



Series: i might seem so strong (i've never been so wrong) [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Character Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 18:42:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3579924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jay815/pseuds/Jay815
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>maya – character exploration</p><p>.</p><p>Some days, you feel like a ghost – at work, you’re young and you learn the right way to avert your eyes, to not just to avoid suspicion but sink into shadows that aren’t anywhere except maybe beneath your skin; at home, you catch your dad jolting when he looks up at you sometimes, and you wonder whose face he sees when he looks at yours.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stay awake with me, take your hand and come and find me

They bring her back to you, burnt and blackened and covered with the scabs of her belief, the flaky remnants of her strength. Your dad grips the edge of the casket and cries huge heaving sobs, but you grip the ends of his shirt and you don’t – as young as you are at 10 years old, as small as you are – because she’d told you not to, because she said that it was natural for her to die, that she didn’t have the right to take life from others to gift it to herself.

Your tears come later, when you learn how dead bodies ejected out of Mount Weather are disposed of, when you learn that the crematorium chute is a trough, a feeding tube leading to stolen warriors-turned-cannibal-addicts.

When they hand out the forms to you age 12, you think about your mom’s hand in yours, (scalding red and cold and falling apart in your gentle hands), you think about the way Cage Wallace – one of the heads of security – had sat across from you, asked you questions about where your mom went at night, who her friends were, where she kept her secret papers. 

You think about the nail marks you’d left etched against the undersides of your thighs, about the faint taste of copper in your mouth from biting your cheek to keep from telling him about the hollow you’d helped carve into the back of your bed. 

You grip the pen tight and think about your dad sunk into his armchair, face drawn, fists clenched weakly, telling you – begging you – to never join Medical.

You think about these things, bite the knuckle of your thumb, and firmly tick the box labelled _Medical Centre_. 

Four years later, you’re the youngest person to pass the Level 2 Medical Exam, and your dad cries. You hug him and you don’t ask if he’s proud or scared.

They start you on grunt work and ignore you. Some of them ignore you because you’re a cleaner, because you pick up their broken glass, wipe up the blood they’re too good to touch, even though they siphon it, use it to survive.

You come to realise that they see the blood as theirs to take, but they can’t bear it until it’s rushing through their veins, until after their skin fades back to the pallor you all share.

You wonder about ownership as your knees ache under you, as the skin on your hands crack from scrubbing the metal grates. 

Some days, you feel like a ghost – at work, you’re young and you learn the right way to avert your eyes, to not just to avoid suspicion but sink into shadows that aren’t anywhere except maybe beneath your skin; at home, you catch your dad jolting when he looks up at you sometimes, and you wonder whose face he sees when he looks at yours. 

Sometimes, after a long shift, when he doesn’t (can’t) look at you at all, you look into the mirror, trace your lips, your nose, sink your fingernails into fragile skin.

You’ve only read about them, but as far as you know, ghosts don’t bleed.

.

They bring in 48 people – all of them sunken into themselves, dressed in clothes that look more like your own than the Outsiders – and you get assigned to decontaminate them, because you’re thorough, because you’re careful, because no one can look away from them, but no one seems to want to touch them. 

Safe inside your suit, you breathe evenly, disinfect their wounds and cut off tattered remnants they brought from the sky, and you try not to think as you wipe off dried blood to reveal nothing but skin. 

Clear, burn-free skin. 

When you’re choked by strong hands – hands with bones that feel strong, firm, _healthy_ – you breathe in until the shard of glass presses hard against your throat, you realise that it is this _thing_ , this anger and frustration that you were all born _deficient_ , that has sustained all of you for so long inside that lonely, hollow mountain.

You raise a gun and point it at Clarke, and you wonder if, when she opens the gate, you’ll learn what grass smells like before your skin peeling away from you becomes the only thing you remember.

.

When you look at Jasper, you let yourself, just for a moment, think that maybe he actually sees you. 

You let yourself think that maybe _normal_ is something you can actually have.

.

Your blood bubbles under your skin as it fades red, translucent, but you’ve never felt less like a ghost than you do right then, because even as you gasp in pain, blood in your throat, on your tongue, you know that the breach is no accident.

You don’t see your mom while you’re unconscious, (it takes you a little longer every day to picture her face), but when you wake up, the first thing you remember is the feel of her cracked, burnt skin under your lips as you kissed her one last time.

You point fresh eyes at the emaciated, thin bodies hung upside down, at starved bodies pressed into cages, see the horror in Jasper’s eyes, the revulsion in Monty’s, and you bite down on your tongue.

You don’t say, _You can’t judge us_.

You don’t say, _We do what we have to do to survive_.

You don’t say, _I didn’t agree for this to happen_.

You clench your fists tight and you look at the floor, and you ignore the incredible itch of your skin, the burning shame that comes just from being alive.

You wonder about your mom, about whether the fire that coursed through her and left her corpse cold had felt like vindication, burned with absolution for someone else’s sins.

You wonder if you’ll find out.

.

It’s not until later that you realise that what she’d burned of wasn’t radiation, but revolution. 

For a brief, giddy moment, just before you disable the security cameras, you let yourself believe that you can survive the fire inside you, the one that burns hotter each time you guide Jasper and Monty down another corridor that shouldn’t be there, the one spreading from your chest to fingers that confidently tap in the security code.

Your hands are small and rough, and when they tap the confirmation key they don’t shake at all.

.

Jasper kisses you in the spirit of a lie, but he’s warm and clumsy and _alive_ , and you’ve only managed a small success, but he feels real and he tastes like an opportunity you didn’t know you had.

.

Lovejoy’s son is small and young, and maybe (if you’re lucky, or maybe if you’re not) one day you will tell him how well you know what it is to lose a parent to a fight that’s bigger than all of you.

Instead, you grip at the hem of your shirt, try not to pick at the dried blood under your fingertips – Lovejoy’s dried blood, your culpability in his death, your guilt at leaving his son fatherless.

You tell yourself that you’re making the right choice, that your mother would be proud of you.

You guide Bellamy through corridors that don’t feel like yours, and you push Lovejoy’s cap low over Bellamy’s eyes so that you don’t have to look into them. 

(They are scales that tip too close to exoneration, offer too much of something that feels like justification.)

.

You try, but you can’t pin down what it is you’re fighting for.

You’re not a revolutionary – you have seen too much blood spilled already to want more; you are not a saviour – you have helped spill too much blood already. 

But you are alive, and when you look into your dad’s eyes and remind him of your mom, you think that maybe the fight is what you’ve needed.

.

Ghosts are invisible: they see things they’re not supposed to see, get into places they don’t belong. People walk through them like they don’t exist, shiver when they make a feeble attempt at rejoining the living.

.

You don’t feel like a ghost anymore.

.

Your father is dead, and all you feel is numb.

You wonder about darkness, about the one growing inside of you, about the flames licking its way out of that darkness.

You press your forehead against your dad’s heavy hand and you wonder which one will consume you first.

.

Clarke mouths _thank you_ at you, and you force a smile and look away.

You’re not a violent person – you joined the medical team to help people, you’ve done what you’ve done because you thought it would minimise cost, you’ve never even punched anyone. But right then, you’re glad that you’re in your suit, that you don’t have a weapon. 

You think about cost, about allegiances, about desperation. You think about the lengths people go to in order to keep those they love alive. 

You want to ask Clarke if it’s worth it, but you don’t, because you’re afraid of the answer.

It's a question you can’t even ask yourself.

.

When Jasper presses a bruising kiss to your lips, you push back hard, fist your hands tightly in his shirt, breathe what you think might be love back against his mouth, because you have nothing left to give.

.

**_immolate_ ** _: kill or offer as a sacrifice, especially by burning_

.

You murmur _none of us is innocent_ because you are dying, and that is easier to say than _I made a choice, and I don’t know if it was the right one, and it is too late to find out, and I am afraid of death_.

.

But still: Jasper grips onto your hand and he doesn’t let go. It’s blistered, rotting, bruised – finally, you think, a reflection you can trust.

.

Your mother died for revolution, your father died for her, and you die with tender skin, bleeding lungs choked with your own cloying death, and a boy holding you tightly like you matter, like you exist.

**Author's Note:**

> imagine-some-clexa.tumblr.com


End file.
